Make Gentle the Life

Despite what historians prefer to predict now, he was by no means assured of winning the Democratic presidential nomination, even after winning the California primary. Vice-President Hubert Humphrey controlled enough non-primary delegates to remain the frontrunner. But RFK hoped to use his California victory to convince Rhode Island to add a primary, and to pressure Humphrey to enter it. Going head to head with the Vice-President, Kennedy was certain he would win, and that win would convince the party bosses who still called most of the shots at the conventions to switch their allegiance to RFK.

That was the plan on the evening of June the 4th, 1968. Mere minutes into the early morning of June the 5th, Bobby Kennedy was sprawled across the floor of the kitchen of LA's Ambassador Hotel, mortally wounded.

The murder of his brother in 1963 was the crucible moment for him. As the Attorney General and protector of JFK's interests, Bobby was driven, devoted, moralistic and, yes, ruthless. But Jack's death put the younger Kennedy through a long night of the soul, and when he emerged, he was a different man: still driven, still devoted, but now feeling kinship with the downtrodden...the poor, the colored, the forgotten.

Elected to the Senate, he became a tribune of the people. He argued for the betterment of those suffering abject poverty in Appalachia, for help for Native Americans, for respect for all people of color. He went to apartheid South Africa and condemned their racist society. He went to Communist Poland and preached liberty, not as some abstract political concept, but as a basic human right.
He made enemies. Few Americans were as polarizing as Bobby. It would come as a shock to many today, I'm sure, that among his non-admirers were many leading liberals. Although RFK is credited as a liberal now, in the Sixties, the New Deal/Adlai Stevenson Liberal Establishment eyed Robert Kennedy with deep suspicion. They despised his arch-conservative father, Joseph P. Kennedy; they hated that Bobby had worked on the staff of Red-baiting Senator Joe McCarthy in the Fifties, and retained a personal affection for McCarthy long after the demagogue fell from grace; and they disliked RFK's opposition to many of Lyndon Johnson's welfare programs.

For his part, Bobby was dismissive of what he called the "sick liberals"...the cocktail party warriors who would rather complain about the issues than get their hands dirty trying to solve problems. And he thought that LBJ's welfare programs simply threw money at the ghettos without doing anything to address the root problems of poverty and racism, and did little more than to condemn whole generations of minorities to a lifetime in crumbling public housing, with sub-standard public schools for the children and few decent jobs for their parents.

And then there was Viet Nam, the matter that tormented him the most. In Jack's administration, Bobby had advocated a hard line in Southeast Asia. But as Johnson escalated the conflict...claiming all the while to be carrying on the policy of John Kennedy...Bobby grew more and more opposed to the war. Still, fearful of splitting the Democratic Party, he kept his reservations mostly private...an act that cost him a lot of support from the anti-war movement which yearned for RFK to lead them.

In early '68, Johnson appeared certain of winning the nomination, and in the interest of party unity, Bobby went so far as to publicly announce...through gritted teeth...that he fully expected to support LBJ's reelection. But then a funny thing happened on the way to Lyndon's re-nomination; Senator Gene McCarthy, challenging LBJ as an avowed peace candidate, came in a strong second in the New Hampshire primary. Suddenly Johnson looked vulnerable, and there was growing doubt that he could beat the likely Republican candidate, Richard Nixon.

Against the advice of most of his political allies and advisors...including his own brother, Teddy...RFK then announced that he was a candidate. Seeing the writing on the wall, Johnson didn't even put up a fight, and he announced that he would not seek re-nomination. But behind the scenes, the President intended to use every means at his disposal to deny Bobby the presidency, and to bestow it on LBJ's loyal VP, Humphrey.

Kennedy battled McCarthy in a series of primaries, while Humphrey avoided the primaries altogether and focused on cutting backroom deals with the bosses to line up delegates (in 1968 there were far fewer primaries, and they were not enough for a candidate to secure a majority of delegates before the convention, even if he had won all of the contests. But one of the party bosses privately urging Bobby on was Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, who kept intoning, "the primaries matter, the primaries matter!" Daley knew that if Kennedy could prove he could win votes there, 'Hizonor' could convince other party bosses to switch their loyalty from Hubert to Bobby).

And so it all came down to California. RFK had just suffered a primary loss in Oregon, and it was understood that if McCarthy could win the Golden State, he could eliminate Kennedy from the race. It was a hard-fought contest, culminating in Bobby's victory. Kennedy also won South Dakota that day, but McCarthy won New Jersey, and was making it clear that he intended to stay in the race all the way to the convention...largely, many felt, to act as a 'spoiler' to prevent RFK from getting the nomination. Gene McCarthy, for all of his towering intellectual and moralistic gifts, could be a small man at times.

Do I think that Bobby would have won the nomination in 1968? Yes, if a lot of things broke his way. I do believe that even if he didn't get the nod, his very presence in Chicago, and his close relationship with Daley, could have altered the city's reaction to the army of anti-war protestors camped out in Grant Park, avoiding the "police riot" that horrified Americans watching on TV and splitting the Democratic Party in half in its wake.

I think the biggest hurdle for Bobby would have been convincing the bosses and the delegates that he could unify the country and win the election in November. A lot of them were nervous as they watched Kennedy campaign; he drew huge crowds, but they weren't the typical political rallies, but more like fundamentalist religious revivals, in that the crowds seemed chaotic, screaming and shouting and laughing, their hands clutching at Bobby as he sat in an open convertible, his own hands scratched bloody from their grasping fingers, his cuff links long gone, even his shoes pulled from his feet. This wasn't politics, it was madness, and it scared the hell out of a lot of Americans who didn't like the long hair, loud music and sexual permissiveness of the young, and who were growing tired of being labeled as racists simply because they didn't have black or brown or red or yellow skin themselves. In that regard, RFK seemed to be the Pied Piper of the the damned.

But those with savvier political instincts looked closer, not at the rapturous acolytes surging around the candidate, but at the large crowds standing respectfully on the outskirts, waving American flags and cheering Robert Kennedy as well. They were the non-shouters, the non-protestors. They fought in World War II, many were blue collar union men, and although they were registered Democrats, they by no means would consider themselves liberals. They supported the war in Viet Nam, but were starting to have some nagging doubts about it. They didn't consider themselves bigots, and they wanted African-Americans to have their equal rights, but they were still jittery about having them move into their neighborhood. They were voters who would find appeal later that year in the candidacies of Nixon and the independent George Wallace, and who would later shift their allegiance to Ronald Reagan.

Many of them may not have even liked RFK very much...but they trusted him. They admired his courage and they respected his convictions, and an awful lot of them thought that he might just be the one man to save the country in that terrible year. In Indiana...a state where the KKK still held strong sway in many parts...these people voted for Bobby, right alongside the blacks of Gary. The conservative farmers of Nebraska had voted for RFK has well, as had small town and rural folk...the "non-black, non-protestor" people...of California. Unlike any other candidate in the race, Robert F. Kennedy could draw support from across the political spectrum. Of all of the presidential hopefuls, he had the best claim on being able to unite the United States again.

It would have been an uphill fight to get the nomination, and another struggle up the mountain to beat Nixon. I think he quite likely would have done it. We'll never know; three bullets tore into his body. He was too strong to die then and there, and he lingered for over a day with mortal injuries. His final rasped words, as he lay on the floor of the hotel, cradled by an Hispanic bus boy who placed a rosary in RFK's hands, were, "Is everybody okay?" Because even as he lay dying, his last thought was of others.

*****

It's tempting to say that he had to die because America didn't deserve him. He was fatalistic about his destiny, admitting to a friend not long before his death, "There are guns between me and the White House."

But I don't believe we are fated to such tragedies. They aren't beyond our control...we cause them, and we can prevent them. Bobby Kennedy would probably have survived the morning of June the 5th if he had Secret Service protection, or if the LAPD had set up a detailed security plan for the Ambassador Hotel, or if Bobby had followed his original instinct to walk through the crowd of supporters to exit the ballroom, instead of letting himself be led through the less-crowded kitchen area, where the emotionally troubled Sirhan Sirhan stood waiting. These days, serious candidates have a phalanx of bodyguards, and every step taken in public is plotted out to the smallest detail. That came in the aftermath of Bobby's assassination.

Robert Kennedy's assassination brought on two tragedies to the nation. First, of course, it took this remarkable man from us, just when he was most needed. But perhaps even worse, it seemed to rob our national spirit of something essential. His martyrdom didn't rally us as it should. With an occasional ballot box exception, we as a people grew sour about our responsibilities as citizens, preferring instead to complain about things, but not bother to make any real effort to change them. RFK believed to his soul that to those for whom much has been given, much is expected. We owe it to ourselves, to our neighbors, and to the world to take an active part in affairs, and to fulfill our obligations as citizens. He would have been appalled by our low voter turnouts, and by our collective acquiescence at not holding the feet of our public servants closer to the fire.

And so today, on the 50th anniversary of his murder, why don't we all look to our own responsibilities as American citizens and, as RFK himself said in perhaps his most powerful public address, "Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.

Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people."

Yes, let us.

On Such a Winter's Day

They weren't The Mamas & The Papas yet...they came upon that name virtually on the spur of the moment later on, after briefly flirting with calling themselves the Magic Circle.  They were just John Phillips, his young wife Michelle, and Denny Doherty, along with their friend Cass Elliot, who had essentially just come along for the ride.  They had driven cross-country and arrived in L.A. in 1965, flat broke and desperate to establish a career in music.

Shortly after arriving in Los Angeles, they literally bumped into an old friend from their Greenwich Village folk days, Barry McGuire.  At the moment, quite improbably, the gravel-voiced McGuire was one of the hottest new stars in Rock & Roll, having scored a #1 hit with a protest anthem, "Eve of Destruction".  McGuire invited the quartet to come sing some of John's original songs for Lou Adler, record producer and owner of the Dunhill label, to which Barry was signed.

Cass had wanted to be an official member of their group, but John had resisted adding her.  Phillips was a domineering personality, and Michelle and Denny were much more easy going and willing to let John play the leader.  But Cass was strong-willed as well, and she had no hesitancy to have it out with John whenever she felt he was pushing too hard, resulting in many an angry argument between them.  He couldn't deny that vocally, she blended beautifully with the other three; indeed, with their voices in full flight, they fused together in such a way that it seemed to create a fifth voice in their midst, resulting in an utterly unique sound.  He just wasn't sure he could put up with her standing up to him.

So she tagged along as the others auditioned for Adler.  They ran through several of their songs as the producer sat quietly with his arms crossed, the brim of his hat down over his eyes, saying little more than an occasional grunt.  They thought they had flopped, but when they were done, Adler offered them a contract with Dunhill.  He later said that internally, he was doing veritable backflips, so blown away by the vocal sounds he had heard, but he didn't want to display his enthusiasm for fear the group would demand too much money.

Adler had only one demand:  Cass was in the group, period.

Shortly afterward, Adler brought the group into United Western Recorders on Sunset Boulevard, the favorite recording studio of Frank Sinatra, the Beach Boys and Elvis Presley.  Although The Mamas & The Papas were longtime folkies, and John played the acoustic guitar, Adler knew that their best hope for success was in the nascent Folk Rock genre.  So, the producer turned to the "Wrecking Crew", that collection of ace studio musicians who had played on such recent #1 Folk Rock hits as "Mr. Tambourine Man" by the Byrds, and Sonny and Cher's "I Got You Babe".  The quartet were joined by drummer Hal Blaine, bassist Joe Osborn, and guitarist P.F. Sloan.

One of the first things they recorded was a song called "California Dreamin'", written by John and Michelle back when they were living in New York City during a particularly cold winter.  When they were done, everyone there agreed it was a terrific recording.  To Lou Adler's ears, it sounded like a hit.  And to his way of thinking, there was only one logical thing to do with it.

He gave it to Barry McGuire.

Needing a follow-up hit to "Eve of Destruction", Adler thought "California Dreamin'" was the perfect choice.  They took Denny Doherty's lead vocals off of the track, but otherwise kept all of the backing vocals from The Mamas & The Papas.  Dunhill put the single out, and had McGuire debut it live on TV's "Shingdig", with The Mamas & The Papas singing backup, their first television appearance together.

And it flopped.  Huge.

It quickly became apparent that this song was not going to follow "Eve of Destruction" up to #1.  Indeed, it didn't even flirt anywhere near the Hot 100.  McGuire would go on to be a One Hit Wonder.  (He did have later success as an actor, appearing in several films, and starring in the original Broadway cast of "Hair").

Ordinarily, that would be that for "California Dreamin'", a failed song consigned to the ash heap of music history.  Except that Lou Adler wasn't done with it yet.  He knew deep in his gut that this had all the makings of a hit.  It was a thoroughbred...he had simply put the wrong jockey in the saddle.

Going back into the studio, he restored Doherty's lead vocals to the tune, and he added something else, replacing a harmonica solo during the bridge with a flute, inspired by "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" by the Beatles.

(Adler was a bit sloppy in erasing McGuire's vocals...if you listen closely at the very beginning, you can hear his rough-hewn voice buried amongst the others.)

Now, certain of success, Adler released the song at Christmastime of '65, and the response was a resounding...nothing.  At least at first.  But slowly, radio stations across the country began to play the song, and it built an audience.  Undoubtedly, it sounded nothing like anything else listeners had heard on the radio before, with those sparkling harmony voices (double-tracked to amplify their power) bursting through the speakers like sunshine, and it took a bit of time for people to understand what they were hearing.  But when they did take a moment to reflect on it, they realized that they liked what they heard.  "California Dreamin'" entered the Billboard charts in January, and by March it had peaked at #4.

And The Mamas & The Papas proved they were no one hit wonders, immediately following up their first hit with "Monday, Monday", which went all the way to #1, as did their debut album, the prophetically titled If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears.

A key ingredient to their initial success was their look.  They made the rounds of multiple TV shows..."Shindig", "Hullabaloo", "The Ed Sullivan Show"...and became immediately identifiable.  There was Denny, good locking and cocksure...John, gangly and mysterious, despite an inviting mega-watt smile...blonde and willowy Michelle...and rotund and joyous Cass, who had an angelic voice that could blast you out of the back seat of the theater.  They helped establish the look of 'hippie chic' with their multi-colored caftans and scarves, and swiftly became the most individually recognizable people in Rock & Roll since John, Paul, George and Ringo.

In retrospect, it's easy to say that "California Dreamin'" was destined to be a hit.  After all, how could it not?  But I think it's more important to recall that before it became a "sure fire" hit, it was a spectacular failure.  And that's often the nature of things, because nothing is certain.  But sometimes you get a second chance...and sometimes you should be careful what you wish for.  For The Mamas & The Papas, the success of "California Dreamin'" put them on the mountaintop for precisely two years, until internal squabbling, drugs the fracturing marriage of John and Michelle, an affair between Michelle and Denny, more drugs, and the pressures of stardom drove them apart.  In the midst of the craziness, they still managed to release four albums, and they put nearly twenty songs on the charts; many hit artists today can't achieve that in a decade.

But for all the troubles to come, there is still the pure, glorious dream promised by this song, and that remains undimmed even decades later.

Maternus Amor

So this Mother's Day is different than any other I've known, because for the first time I'm honoring not one, but two Moms.

As many of my friends know, I was adopted as a newborn.  I knew very, very little about my birth family, beyond the name I was christened with.  As an adult, not surprisingly, I was curious about where I came from, and with my Mom's encouragement I tried to find out some details.

Unfortunately, there were none to be had.  In a plot twist straight out of Dickens, back in the early 1970s there had been a fire at the orphanage where I was given to, and their paper records were destroyed.  All traces of my hidden past were gone.

While it would have been really nice to have known where I came from, and whether I had any siblings, I reconciled myself to never knowing, and put it out of my mind.

Until last September, that is.  That's when, for my birthday, my wife Dahlia got me the 23andme DNA testing.  Truthfully, it was so that I could get a clearer picture of my medical history, since I had no idea what 'runs in the family', and also to determine my actual ethnic nationalities.

Turns out my ancestry is largely British, Irish and French, with a smattering of other various European groups...and, intriguingly, 0.2% Native American.  I'd love to know the story of that hook up.

Health-wise, genetically speaking, I'm in fantastic shape, with no real disposition toward anything scary.  Did you know that Maple Syrup Urine Disease is an actual thing?  Well, now I do, but I'm not worried, because I don't have the variant for it.

The report is eerily specific about physical traits.  Genetically, I'm not likely to have a cleft chin, and I don't.  I should have detached earlobes, and I do.  DNA says I shouldn't have to worry about going bald, which pleases Dahlia to no end.

I do have 296 Neanderthal variants, which is more than 79% of the population does, so I have that going for me.

I found all of this fascinating as I read it for the first time.  Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum with Peripheral Neuropathy?  Nothing I have to worry about!  That Native American coupling likely happened sometime between 1700 and 1820?  Maybe they knew Alexander Hamilton!  I share a common ancestor with King Louis XVI?  Sacré bleu!

So I'm clicking through all of the reports online, and I come to one marked 'Your DNA Family'.  Opening it, I find 1,062 people, most of the listed as second to fifth cousins, and most of them anonymous.

But then there was the one at the top...the one identified only as Aimee.  The one who shares 26.3% DNA with me, and who the report clinically announces "We predict this person is your Half Sister".

Pow.  In an instant, I had a sister.

I was able to send a message to Aimee via the website (and as shocked as I was to learn of her, she surely was just as shocked to, in essence, get an Email announcing SURPRISE!  You have a half-brother you knew nothing about!!!)  We connected, and I got another surprise...I actually have two half-sisters!  Andrea is the younger of the two.

The tale is thus:  Marie was a young, single career girl in Chicago when, in January of 1966, she became pregnant.  Marriage was out of the question, as apparently my birth father quickly disappeared from Marie's life, presumably when she told him the news.  Despite the stigma of being an unwed mother at the time...and a Catholic at that...Marie was determined to have me.

She was also determined to give me up.

I had been asked once or twice in my life if I felt "abandoned", since I was placed in an orphanage at birth.  Just the opposite, actually...I've felt loved.  Because even as a child when I thought about this, I knew a woman carried me for nine months, cared for me, underwent the trauma of childbirth, and despite all of her maternal instincts to keep and nurture me, she gave me to others, because she knew it was the best thing for me.  Marie didn't just give me life, she gave me one of the most unselfish, loving acts a mother can bestow on their child.

I'd have liked very much to have told Marie that, and to thank her.  Sadly, she passed away in 2013.  What makes me most sorry is that I never had the opportunity to tell her that she did the right thing, and that it all worked out fine...that a good family took me, that I've grown up happy, and that my life is a good and fulfilling one.  I'm sure it would have pleased her mightily to know that.

A few years after having me, Marie met a man, and in time they married, had children, and grandchildren.  She raised her daughters with love, and taught them to be the best they can be.  She worked, she retired, she reveled in the role of grandmother.  She lived a perfectly normal life.  I am genuinely happy for her and the life she led.

Since this discovery, I've exchanged emails and texts with Aimee and Andrea.  Aimee lives in Iowa, and not too long ago I drove out to meet her, spending the afternoon talking.  This is going to sound tritely cliché, but it's the God's honest truth...I felt an immediate connection with her, and it felt as if we got on like two people who have known one another forever.  Andrea is in Ohio, and I'm hoping to either find the opportunity before too much more time has passed to go there, or perhaps we can stage a bit of a 'family reunion' for the three of us somewhere else.

And when we do, I'd like to raise a toast to our mother, Marie Frances Cousineau.  Until then, I'll simply wish her...

Happy Mother's Day

So, When Did Rock Finally Rule?

Rock and Roll has been so pervasive and dominant for so long...and for the sake of this piece, we'll encompass Hip Hop and Modern Country under the Rock umbrella as well...it's easy to think that it simply took over popular music right from the very start.

Although Rock and Roll first emerged as a Top 40 force in 1955 with the likes of Bill Haley and Chuck Berry, it was in '56 that it truly emerged as a dominating style, thanks primarily to Elvis Presley, who had four #1 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart for a dazzling total of 26 out of 52 weeks that year.

(The name "Rock and Roll" predated the genre, by the way, having its origins in 1920s Blues music.  In the early 1950s, DJ Alan Freed began calling the high-energy Rhythm & Blues songs he played "Rock and Roll", and the name stuck when the new style, so heavily derived from R&B, emerged.)

Although Elvis and other Rock and Rollers still competed for chart space with decidedly non-Rock artists for several more years (other #1 songs in 1956 included "Lisbon Antigua" by Nelson Riddle and his Orchestra, "The Poor People of Paris" by Les Baxter, and "The Wayward Wind" by Gogi Grant...none of which found their way into the later repertoires of the Rolling Stones or the Beatles, unsurprisingly), the sea change had begun.

But Rock and Roll did not come to utterly eclipse all of the recording industry...at least not for quite a few years.  Instead, pop music developed a schism, with Rock prevailing among 45 RPM singles, and other musical forms holding sway over 33 1/3 RPM long player albums.  This was primarily for economic reasons.  The growth of the Middle Class in the 1950s gave Baby Boomers disposable income, and they chose to spend it on 45s, which averaged at a cost of between 50¢ and $1, whereas LPs could be a more princely $3, $4 or $5 apiece.

And so albums became the province of non-Rock genres.  Pop singers like Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald and Mel Torme would release several LPs in a calendar year, as would Jazz musicians such as Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Duke Ellington.  Boardway cast album and movie soundtracks were hugely successful (the cast album of My Fair Lady was the best selling LP of both 1957 and 1958!).  In the early Sixties, comedy records from the likes of Bob Newhart and Allan Sherman sold in the millions.

Of course, that's not to say that Rock and Rollers didn't release albums as well.  Generally though, they were considered more disposable by their record labels...a bit of a cash grab that usually consisted of ten or so songs quickly recorded in order to pad around a hit single.

Things began to change rapidly in the mid-1960s, however.  An impetus for this change was the fact that so many British Invasion bands, led by the Beatles, were releasing albums that weren't mere collections of random songs, but had themes.  The Boomer population was at its peak, the economy was roaring, and at last 33 1/3's were easily accessible to Rock fans,

Still, you might be surprised to learn that it still took a bit longer for Rock and Roll to take total charge.  The best-selling album of 1964, the year the Beatles hit in America and unleashed the British Invasion, saw the cast album of Hello, Dolly! outsell everything else.  In '65, it was the soundtrack to Mary Poppins.

It wasn't until 1966 that an album that could arguably fall into the realm of Rock and Roll was the best-seller of the year:  Whipped Cream & Other Delights by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass.  Now, while Alpert and his assemblage were considerably hipper than, say, Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians, a lot of fans might have to be convinced to consider them rockers.

Personally, I think it was the album's cover that helped hawk more than a few copies.  ;)

And then came 1967, the year of Sgt. Pepper.  And that just had to be the biggest seller of the year...right?

Nope.

The biggest selling album of that year, the year of the Summer of Love, was More of the Monkees.  Now, mind you, I'm a big fan of the Monkees, and it's impossible to claim that songs like "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone" and "I'm A Believer", both found on this LP, aren't absolute classic pop songs.  But this album is really little more than unused tracks from the first Monkees LP sessions, churned out to capitalize on their massive overnight success.  Heck, the photo used for the jacket was an outtake of a photoshoot they did to promote 'Monkees Clothes' from J.C. Penney!  Creatively, their next two albums released that year, on which they gained artistic control and wrote and played on, were far superior.  But this was the album that sold in the millions.

But at least the Monkees broke the stranglehold on album sales, and at long last ushered in the era of Rock and Roll dominance.  And 1968, in terms of undeniable Rock and Roll, did it right.

Sure, it was the year of "The White Album" by the Beatles, Beggar's Banquet from the Stones, and Wheels of Fire by Cream.  But this time, fans were right on the money, buying in greater quantities the one album that year that is arguably as good, if not better than, those epic milestones:  Are You Experienced? from the Jimi Hendrix Experience.

Since 1968, the album charts would be ruled forevermore by Rock and Roll.  Even movie soundtracks like Jesus Christ Superstar, Saturday Night Fever and The Bodyguard...all the biggest sellers of their release years...were steeped in the stylistic trappings of Rock.  Sometimes the all-time annual sellers were head-scratchingly strange:  Iron Butterfly's In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida ('69)?  Some Gave All ('92) from Billy Ray Cyrus?  But other times, they were right on the money.  Because of course Bridge Over Trouble Water by Simon and Garfunkel ('70), Goodbye Yellow Brick Road by Elton John ('74), Rumours by Fleetwood Mac ('77), Thriller by Michael Jackson ('83 and '84), and both 21 ('11 and '12) and 25 ('15) by Adele had to be the biggest selling albums of their years, because they quite probably best encapsulated what was best about Rock and Roll in those years.  They were certainly all artistic triumphs for the performers who created them.

So now you know some new bits of trivia to amaze your friends with.  Here's one more:  do you know which artist was the only biggest seller in three different years with three different albums?  None other than Sir Elton John!  There was the aforementioned ...Brick Road, while his Greatest Hits Volume I sold like hotcakes in 1975, and he returned to the top in 1994 with the soundtrack to The Lion King.  And on that note, let's go out with some Elton...

As I Sit There Applauding From a Front-Row Seat

They say that every great song has a great story behind it, and that's certainly true with "I Wanna Be Around".

Sadie Vimmerstedt was a fifty-something grandmother living in Youngstown, Ohio in 1957, and she had a serious dislike for Frank Sinatra.  It wasn't his voice she didn't care for, but rather the fact that several years earlier, he had left his first wife, Nancy, in order to chase (and eventually marry...and then divorce) actress Ava Gardner.  Mrs. Vimmerstedt thought it was shameful that Sinatra had abandoned the wife and children who adored him so that he could make a fool of himself panting after Hollywood's reigning sex goddess.

One day, thinking about what Sinatra had done, words suddenly came to mind:  I wanna be around to pick up the pieces, when somebody breaks your heart.  She decided that would make a great opening for a song.  But as she wasn't very musical herself, and had never written a song in her life, she concluded it would be wiser to let a professional take over.  For her choice, she went straight to the top.

Johnny Mercer isn't as well remembered these days as such contemporaries as Gershwin, Harold Arlen and Cole Porter still are, which baffles me.  He wrote some of the greatest tunes in the 'Great American Songbook', including "Hooray for Hollywood", "That Old Black Magic", "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)" and "Moon River", among dozens of others.  He was also a major recording star himself in the 1940s, wrote the songs for several Broadway musicals, and was nominated for no fewer than 18 Academy Awards for his film work (winning four Oscars over the course of his career).  Oh, and in his spare time, he co-founded Capitol Records, and discovered Nat King Cole.  But while he remains in relative obscurity these days, in the Fifties, he was as well known as almost any entertainer in America.  Mrs. Vimmerstedt decided he would be the perfect songwriting collaborator.  She wrote Mercer a letter, sharing the opening lyric she had come up with, and explaining the inspiration for the song.

She then addressed the envelope to:

Johnny Mercer

Songwriter

New York, NY

That's right, she didn't even have an actual address for Mercer, she just had faith it would find him.  Keep in mind that, then as now, New York was home to several million people.  Unfortunately at the time, Johnny Mercer wasn't one of them.  He had actually moved out to California back in the 30s.

This is exactly the sort of mail that is destined for the Dead Letter Office, almost never to find its recipient.  But miraculously, Mrs. Vimmerstedt's faith was well-placed; an employee at the NYC Post Office saw the letter, and knew that Mercer was living on the West Coast.  He forwarded the letter to Los Angeles, hoping that his counterparts there could get it to Mercer.  And they did!  Like I said, Mercer was a star back then, and the mailmen knew where he lived.

Johnny opened the envelope, read the letter, agreed that it was a good opener for a song, and a good premise overall...and then he put the letter in a desk drawer and forgot about it for a year or two.  But then one day when he had nothing else to do, Mercer happened to open the drawer, rediscover the letter, and decided to actually write the rest of the song.

Mercer wasn't one for sticky sentimentality (after all, the inspiration for his brilliant, soul-wrenching "One for My Baby" was in fact himself, written in the painful wake of the end of his love affair with Judy Garland.  He wouldn't even give himself a happy ending in his own song!), so he avoided the treacly trap of turning the song around in the final stanza and having the singer welcome his unfaithful lover back.  No, this was a song about sticking the knife in, and deep.  It was an anthem for everyone who had been wronged by love.  As far as I'm concerned, it might very well be the first punk rock song.  It's a loss to us all that the Ramones never got around to covering it.

     I want to be around to pick up the pieces
     When somebody breaks your heart
     Some somebody twice as smart as I

     A somebody who will swear to be true
     As you used to do with me
    Who'll leave you to learn
    That misery loves company, wait and see

    I mean, I want to be around to see how he does it
    When he breaks your heart to bits
    Let's see if the puzzle fits so fine

    And that's when I'll discover that revenge is sweet
    As I sit there applauding from a front-row seat
    When somebody breaks your heart
    Like you, like you broke mine

Honorably, Mercer gave Mrs. Vimmerstedt co-credit along with 50% of the royalties, which were enough to let her retire and pursue her lifelong dream of traveling the world.  It also made her a minor celebrity in her own right, and for a while she kept busy giving newspaper interviews and appearing on radio and television talk shows.  It was a dizzying pace for her, and after a few months she wrote another letter to her songwriting partner saying, "Mr. Mercer, I've just got to get out of show business...it's exhausting!"

The song was recorded by a number of artists, but it achieved it's first real and lasting fame in 1963, when Tony Bennett recorded what is today still acknowledged as the definitive version:

A great performance of a great song, truly.

(And for the record, Sinatra did his own version in 1964, with Count Basie and his band.  Whatever the inspiration, Frank wasn't about to let that stand in the way of singing a good song.)

Cover Me

Or, finding success the second time around

Sometimes an artist records a song that they have a great deal of faith in.  They just know in their heart that it's going to be huge.  They release it, and then...nothing.

Often, it's just a matter of timing.  Aerosmith's first 45 single, "Dream On", fell short of breaking into the Top 40 in 1973.  Re-released three years later after the band had put a couple of other hits on the charts, it went Top 10.

In some cases however, artists decide to take the radical step of actually re-recording the song, with the end result being the hit the original failed to be. 

Here are some of the better-known examples of that....

The Beach Boys released their TODAY album in March of 1965, and one of the tracks on it was a pleasant if relatively unremarkable ditty called "Help Me Ronda".

But almost immediately upon the LP's release, Brian Wilson began to reconsider it, and he came to the conclusion that it had the potential to be a hit single...but not in the version that was just released.  So as the group began recording songs for their next album, SUMMER DAYS (AND SUMMER NIGHTS!), Wilson had them cut an entirely new version of the song (with an 'h' now added to Rhonda's name, for some unknown reason).  This new take had a slightly quicker tempo and lusher instrumentation.  And Carl Wilson's guitar lick just pops right out of the vinyl.  Brian's instincts proved true, and this new version of the song, released as a single, peaked at #1 on the U.S. chart.

Of course, never one to be fully satisfied with his own monumental accomplishments, Brian Wilson later said that he had always felt he could have done even better with this song, and he wished he could record it a third time.

~~~

Rick Derringer had briefly tasted success in the mid-Sixties with his band, the McCoys, but their fame proved fleeting.  By 1970 he found himself the second guitarist in Johnny Winter's band, and it was there that he wrote "Rock & Roll, Hoochie Koo".  It was an album track on Winter's JOHNNY WINTER AND, and it proved to be a popular tune when performed live in concert, although it wasn't released as a single.  It popped up again two years later on a live album by Johnny's brother, Edgar Winter, with Johnny and Rick guesting on stage to perform it.

By 1973, Derringer had launched a solo career, based in no small part on his belief that "...Hoochie Koo" was a hit single waiting to happen.  So he cut his own version, speeding it up a tad and adding backing singers, and voila...instant Top 40 hit!

~~~

There was a time in the late 1950s and early 1960s when instrumental groups flourished and thrived in rock and roll.  In the Sixties, many of them were pioneering the 'surf sound', and one of the most successful were the Ventures.  Their very first hit, in 1960, was "Walk, Don't Run", a cover of an older jazz tune.  Their far more poppish version soared to #2 on the charts.

Then just four years later, the band decided to do a new version of the song (dubbed, appropriately enough, "Walk, Don't Run '64").  This take made use of the studio and recording technology in a way largely unheard at the time, with high-pitched organ riffs, and an early example of the fade-in intro.  In the midst of the first wave of the British Invasion, these 'old timers' managed to put this new take of the song into the Top 10.

~~~

Considering from what direction you look at it, Dave Mason's career has either been a series of unlikely mini-successes, or else a string of partial failures.  His first big break was as a founding member of Traffic in 1967, but he quit the band shortly after the release of their debut album.  He rejoined them the following year about halfway through their second LP, for which he contributed a track called "Feelin' Alright?".  This song was released as a single in both Britain and America, but failed on both sides of the Atlantic...which was probably just as well, since Mason had again quit the band by that point.

He bounced around mostly as a session musician (with credits...albeit occasionally un-credited...on the likes of BEGGAR'S BANQUET by the Rolling Stones and ALL THINGS MUST PASS from George Harrison.  He was also slated to be the second guitarist...alongside Eric Clapton, of course...in Derek and the Dominoes, but for one reason or another he took a pass on that, and Clapton picked up Duane Allman instead), until he finally launched a proper solo career in 1970.

In the midst of this, Joe Cocker memorably performed "Feelin' Alright?" at Woodstock, and went on to put a version of the song in the Top 40.  That got Mason thinking that maybe he ought to give the tune another spin.

Mason recorded his take in 1973, and while it was not a hit single, it did become an FM staple, and remains popular on classic rock radio stations to this day, making it undeniably Mason's most popular piece of work.

~~~

Honorable Mention

In 1962, producer George Martin was three-quarters satisfied with the new pop quartet he had just signed to Parlophone Records.  Taking the band's manager, Brian Epstein, aside, Martin told him that guitarists John Lennon and George Harrison, and bassist Paul McCartney were proficient enough on their instruments to play on the recordings, but that drummer Pete Best simply wasn't up to snuff.  As a result, when the Beatles came into the studio soon to record their very first single, Martin intended to have a session drummer there to take Best's place.

Epstein reasoned that Pete could continue playing with the group on stage, but that they would go on using a hired drummer for the records.  But that didn't sit well with John, Paul and George.  If they were good enough to perform in the studio, then they wanted their drummer to be that good as well.  Unfortunately, it was well-established that Pete was indifferent at best (no pun intended) at improving his playing, being perfectly satisfied to just bash away more or less in time.  As if his lack of dedication to his craft wasn't maddening enough to his bandmates, he and they were becoming estranged, as Pete more or less stopped hanging around with the other three, showing up for performances and then heading off with other friends while the three Beatles made their own way to a pub.  The writing was on the wall:  Pete Best had to go.

Strengthening this decision was the fact that the other Beatles already knew exactly who they wanted to replace him with.  Richard Starkey, a.k.a. "Ringo Starr", was widely acknowledged as the best rock and roll drummer in Liverpool.  He played steadily with the regionally successful Rory Storm & the Hurricanes, although he had grown dissatisfied that the group would never advance to greater success so long as Rory insisted they remain a cover band, instead of producing their own original songs.  Ringo would often jam with the Beatles after hours, and on a few occasions had even sat in with the group when Pete couldn't perform.  He got along famously with John, Paul and George, and envied the fact that they were making their own music.  So when they asked him to take Best's place, Ringo didn't hesitate, and he was there with his kit the very next day.  (Poor Brian had the unhappy task of having to inform Pete he was sacked, as the rest of the group made themselves scarce until the deed was done.  Best was shocked and saddened, but basically took it in stride.  His fans did not; one of Pete's more ardent female devotees slugged George Harrison, leaving him with a black eye for a few days!)

After a couple of weeks of daily live performances at the Cavern Club and elsewhere, Ringo knew their repertoire inside and out, and enthusiastically traveled down to London with them to record their very first songs, in EMI's Abbey Road studios.  But upon arrival, their shock was exceeded only by his disappointment when they walked into the studio and were informed that a professional drummer, Andy White, had been retained for the session; no one had informed George Martin that Pete had been fired and replaced, so he went ahead and did as he had promised, booking a session pro.  The Beatles argued that Ringo could play his drums as well, if not better, than anyone else, but Martin was dubious.  Besides, White would have to be paid regardless, so it made no sense not to use him.  The decision imposed upon the group, Ringo was unhappily relegated to playing a tambourine on the song.  The incident remained a source of great unhappiness and embarrassment for him for many years to come.

Flash forward 36 years, and Ringo Starr gets his revenge.  During the recording of his VERTICAL MAN CD, it dawns on Ringo that there was no good reason why he couldn't do his own version of "Love Me Do"...and, of course, get to play the drums on it this time!  And so he did, bringing himself closure at last.

He Could Play a Guitar Just Like Ringin' a Bell

We have rock & roll as we know it in large part because of Chuck Berry.

First and foremost, he made the electric solid-body guitar (a relatively new invention in and of itself) the primary instrument of the new musical form, steering the nascent musical style away from R&B piano and countrified hollow-body guitars as the musical vehicle of choice.  You don't get to Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page and Eddie Van Halen without Chuck.

Secondly, he was the complete artist.  He not only played and sang, but he composed his own material as well (frequently in collaboration with Johnnie Johnson).  Few performers wrote their own songs at the time; Elvis didn't, nor did Frank Sinatra or Tony Bennett or Bing Crosby.  New York City was full of songwriters who were turning out material for others to sing.  But Berry was a natural storyteller, who put his tales of dancing, dating, high school beauty queens and living the American dream to music in a way that was emotionally light years ahead of virtually anything else heard in rock & roll at the time.  He ushered in a new era of singers who wrote their own material, such as Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison.  Of course, some of his most successful spiritual offspring are Brian Wilson and Lennon and McCartney.

Lastly, he brought honest-to-God swagger.  Elvis may have oozed raw sex appeal on stage, but otherwise he was a shy country boy.  Little Richard was a wild man, but so much so that he almost seemed like a living cartoon.  The only other African-American rocker of Chuck's caliber in the Fifties was Fats Domino, who was a quiet, reticent man.  But Chuck was not shy.  He was handsome and witty and sharp, he dressed in fine clothes and he drove expensive cars.  We have a hard time understanding now just how seismically radical that was for 1950s white America.  Of course, he paid a steep price for that soon enough.

At the absolute peak of his fame, with a long string of huge hit songs behind him..."Maybelline", "Roll Over Beethoven", "Johnny B. Goode", "Sweet Little Sixteen" among them...Chuck found himself in prison.  Not surprisingly, he was the architect of his own downfall.  Maybe he had gotten too cocky, and figured his success made him untouchable.  He quickly learned otherwise.  He had opened a nightclub back in his native St. Louis, and for reasons unfathomable, he thought it was a good idea to drive an underage Apache prostitute from Arizona back to Missouri so she could work at the club.  That violated the Mann Act, which forbade transporting minors across state lines for immoral purposes, and that was a federal crime.

Chuck landed himself in the slammer for a couple of years, and in the meantime, rock & rock underwent a massive transformation.  Most of the first generation of stars disappeared from the charts, and the few who could hang on, most notably Elvis, began turning out syrupy ballads, which was what the corporate music industry had largely reduced rock & roll to, once they had gotten a better handle on the beast and tamed it.

So when Chuck finally got out of prison, he was bitter, and it looked as if he was forgotten.  Worse than forgotten, really...he saw himself being robbed; some lily white punk kids out in California calling themselves the Beach Boys had a Top 5 hit with a song called "Surfin' U.S.A."  The credit for writing the song was claimed solely by Brian Wilson, and thus 100% of the royalties were going to him.  The problem was, the entire melody, kicked off by a note-for-note copy of Chuck's signature guitar riff, was an exact duplicate of Chuck's own "Sweet Little Sixteen".  Chuck didn't hold out much hope for compensation, but after a couple of years of legal agitation, not only was the song re-credited as a Wilson/Berry composition, but Chuck's own music publishing company got the full rights to the song.  So, score one for the brown-eyed handsome man.

More daunting still was the prospect of rebuilding his own musical career.  America at the time wasn't well-known for giving black ex-cons a second chance, particularly when that chance meant letting their white teenaged daughters swoon over his songs.  There was also the fact that nearly a full decade had passed since he had his first hit song, and for a lot of young teens, Chuck Berry was seen as a relic of that ancient past known as the Fifties.  But he had the loyal support of his record label, Chicago blues giant Chess Records, and what's more, Chuck had some powerful arrows in his quiver.

It's pretty amazing that for all of the bitterness he felt for the hand fate had dealt him, Chuck didn't let it sour the inherent optimism of his songwriting.  As a result, he beat the odds, roaring up the charts with a couple of his best tunes, "Nadine", "No Particular Place to Go" and, greater still, "You Never Can Tell".  And he did it during the musical tsunami that was the British Invasion, when so many other American artists were washed away from America's own Top 40.  It certainly didn't hurt him any that the Beatles and Rolling Stones were not only proclaiming their love and admiration for Chuck, but recording their own versions of his tunes.

That's kind of the high water mark for Chuck Berry.  He was now firmly ensconced as an Elder Statesman of Rock, and given the deference and respect he was due.  He continued to tour successfully for decades to come, and his music became ingrained into the soul of global culture.  The People's Republic of China made a big deal out of banning "Roll Over Beethoven" because they felt it was disrespectful to the classical composer.  When NASA sent the Voyager probe off into the universe on the off-chance it might be found by some other species, they included a disc with examples of what the dominant species on Earth had accomplished to date, and they included "Johnny B. Goode".  When they launched the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, Chuck was in the very first class of inductees.

I've got a Chuck Berry story of my own, although it's not a very fulfilling one.  Back around 2000 or so, I had the chance to see him and Little Richard play live.  Richard was astounding, singing with the energy of a 25 year old, pounding out song after song on his piano as he wailed and "Ooooooooo'd" with reckless abandon.

Chuck, sadly, seemed every bit a man in his seventies.  His voice was flat, and he didn't even bother to properly tune his guitar.  He never toured with his own band in those days; he simply required that promoters find a couple of local musicians to back him up.  As any halfway decent bar band can play the Chuck Berry repertoire, it shouldn't be difficult to find some competent sidemen.  And yet, this promoter managed to achieve an epic fail.  The bass player had his amp cranked up way too high, so that his thump-thump-thump nearly drowned out all other sounds.  Worse still was the guy behind the drum kit, who played as if he had never held two sticks before.  It probably didn't help any that he had a broken arm and his limb was in a cast.  If Chuck still cared about the music, I'm sure he would have told those two to get the hell off of his stage, and then just played and sang all by himself.  But sadly, he had stopped caring.  This was just another paycheck, and it didn't matter if the show was any good or not...the money would still be the same.

But I don't let that night spoil my love for Chuck Berry.  As far as I'm concerned, he contributed enough great art to our culture to get a lifetime pass for bad concerts.  And now that he's died (having lived multiple lifetimes in his 90 years), I think it's the perfect opportunity for people to explore his work.  Do yourself a favor and look beyond the usual hits, and seek out gems like "Thirty Days (To Come Back Home)", "Promised Land", "Reelin' and Rockin'", and what I think is the greatest rock & roll Christmas song (and why is it that rock & rollers so often fail at creating decent Christmas songs?  Hell, even Paul McCartney and Elton John couldn't pull it off.), "Run Rudolph Run".

Farewell Chuck, and thanks for everything.

Tell the folks back home this is the promised land callin'
And the poor boy's on the line